He claims it was to protect Konoha from breaking out into a war and causing more deaths but the method that he used were he engaged in genocide basically showcased his hypocrisy.

Was an innocent Uchiha child's life less valuable then another Konoha citizen/child?

Why if he was so holy in sacrificing his entire clan for his so called "greater good" not able to also kill his own brother? He and Obito killed many other siblings, did they not have brotherly or sisterly love like him and Sasuke? Why did he lie to himself with this so called selfish act in order to justify his rampage?

Konoha wasn't even a place of open tolerance and love. Even when Itachi was a child Konoha was engaging in multiple battles visible and hidden were lives innocent and deserving were taken away. Even after the war ceased, Konoha killed and captured multiple lives like other shinobi villages who also engaged in such horrid acts.

All for power, influence and wealth. Konoha's peace was just militarization in order to out influence and outpower everyone else so that their dominion can't be questioned.

Danzou, one of the main problems even kidnaped orphans and cooperated with Orochimaru and his experiments in order to serve Konoha's agenda.

Itachi believed this was something that should not only be ignored but rather they and their select clans/families should be protected in order to maintain a so called inner peace of a select few. A bourgeois privilege of being a Konoha civilian and not an Uchiha clan one let alone if you were poor and couldn't even afford a Konoha or other shinobi protection plan.

Apparently for him, killing his entire clan was justified instead of trying to go out of his way to prevent a conflict. Itachi couldn't argue openly and in private a way for peace or even take on more then one side be both Konoha and the Uchiha clan. Instead he went directly to the head of the village who was compliant in war crimes and human right atrocities and only asked him for advice.

He claimed it was already too late and that he had no choice, but his claim is as bad as anyone else deciding the best way to prevent an oppressed district from uprising was to literally kill the potential up-risers and anyone connected to them and their potential root of conflict.

A criminal's family are all criminals mindset. Let alone the so called "criminals" had yet to follow through with the criminal action of retaliation.

What if they would've asked for demands for rights like everyone else in the village, what if they asked for independence? Was these things apparently unjustified for the so called hero Itachi?

We've seen in the real world that one can take the middle ground. They can do things in an OPEN environment, addressing an issue, speaking about it to the public and trying to convince two sides to reconsider and reform.

Heck we see in NARUTO himself that you can try and do things with open talking instead of doing scheming and/or deciding for your selfish self that not only one person or people can't be saved but their blood relations who have nothing to do with the side scenario even IF they too are oppressed and angry have apparently no right to life.

Itachi assumed that Konoha even with Danzou egging on the situation and Hiruzen playing a major part due to his cowardly negligence were somehow more in the right and have more of a right to life then the Uchiha clan.

Again his arguments is a death toll would be prevented if one side was killed off compared to the other but literally choosing to end any side when no crime was yet to be committed was not about protecting the peace it was instead enforcing your selfish belief with blood and death. He believed Konoha's views and rule was law and that it had to reign over anything else be it his own clan or anyone else less fortunate.

By killing them he made himself the real criminal and villain, there is no pity needed, he didn't place any burden on himself since he exempted his brother from his mass genocide. His parents? It wasn't a sacrifice if he believed their lives were less worthy then that of other Konoha families let alone elders or even Danzou.

It was all about him in the end. He was indoctrinated in the so called "will of fire". He was right, Konoha was more worthy and the Uchiha were wrong. He didn't believe that Uchiha's had any right to anything, let alone life.

If he was so selfless he would've killed himself and his brother as well, but even then it would be hypocritical for he not only killed people for the belief that they were going to cause deaths, but also others who were not going to take part but had the sole crime in being born an Uchiha.

It is comparable to someone being born into an ethnic group that is living in an oppressed district and ghetto under a said military theocracy (will of fire) and so some of the said people in the district decide to have meetings in a secret place that you are aware off in order to cause an uprising and to become independent from said regime's rule.

You decide the best course of action is instead to kill all those in the oppressed district and that it is a selfless sacrifice even though you won't die and you also agreed to the regime that your sibling would be spared.

You instead didn't do anything heroic, you just acted in a human right crime for your own selfish reasons.

You also had a bias for the said regime over another people. One life is better then the other.

Now back on topic....

Itachi also selfishly assumed that he was right to choose people's destiny and future and that even children were not allowed to live so that a oppressing village could be safe. A village built on blood and bones.

By deciding things for himself and not doing things via peaceful protest, he left his mark as some self racist uber nationalist that could somehow choose the life of others over the life of someone else.

He had no choice in the matter? It was never his choice to begin with, he could've engaged on either side if they continued to cause havoc in a self defense manner but ending a scenario in the method that he did was indeed bigoted and a human right crime. From a limited amount of knowledge he concluded that the best course of action was to commit a crime itself, what difference was his so called act of mercy compared to those Uchiha clan members who wanted to cause a war? Likely due to his experience with some of these members he wanted to retaliate at them and others who were less extreme because he felt isolated and separate from the rest of his clan.

What he did wasn't maintaining any so called peace it was just maintaining the protection of the privileged and not of those that were not under that said status. Let alone those so called people who needed to be protected had some that were causers of conflict and crimes. Alas for them they are allowed to do as they please but the Uchiha clan instead had to be killed off before such scenarios could even arise, let alone again even some who weren't even aware of such cases, some that didn't even know how to talk, walk or even think yet as they were still in their diapers, or the elderly or some that were young that had dreams or some that had hope for a better future.

Later after death he recognized his crimes or even prior to that he claimed it was a burden he had to carry. There was no sacrificial connection to this, he didn't even lose anything beyond the mistake that at one point he assumed was more right. Yet infant bones and that of others that had no crime are now buried away and forgotten by history.

A hero version of Itachi would've at least attempted to try and bring about peace instead of giving up on other people's right to live and deciding for them that they can't change, let alone those that weren't involved heavily but only had the crime of association.

Even if he died or was killed by either side be it Konoha or the Uchiha clan he would've been more righteous then his cowardly version of so called maintaining peace.

In conclusion, what this shows is that Kishi never had any long term plans to make Itachi a good guy but when he eventually did want to create a redemption story for the character it was already too late.

If there was a hell in the narutoverse, Itachi would be burning in it.​

Kishi just likes Itachi because he is the only character in his manga that is not one dimensional. He thinks so high of writing Itachi but if you want to make a horrible person like Itachi into the hero then, sorry buddy, your writing is terrible.

Itachi's reasoning and excuses where complete bullshit. It should had better had it been like:

Itachi was a child genius, young and easy to manipulate due to his teenage nature. Very easy to impress, so he basically was fed shit to spite his own family, once he killed them he realized that his upper ANBU management had screwed him up. So he joined Akatsuki to have his revenge and make a better world because he liked Pain's plan.
However he still loved his brother despite all his shit choices in life.

morale of the story: Family always comes first, so dont make shit choices in life that compromise them.

Itachi's reasoning and excuses where complete bullshit. It should had better had it been like:

Itachi was a child genius, young and easy to manipulate due to his teenage nature. Very easy to impress, so he basically was fed shit to spite his own family, once he killed them he realized that his upper ANBU management had screwed him up. So he joined Akatsuki to have his revenge and make a better world because he liked Pain's plan.
However he still loved his brother despite all his shit choices in life.

morale of the story: Family always comes first, so dont make shit choices in life that compromise them.

Click to expand...

Moral of the story is Ishiyama created a better Itachi in 'Zeke Yeager'.

I dislike the character and know it was horrible writing involved in his story but damn even now he still gets hate. In a backwards kinda way Kishimoto did something good with writing Itachi creating such feelings of anger towards him people hate rant his ass many years later. You know that does take some talent.

The problem with Kishimoto, and all those who support Itachi, is that they erroneously believe that "social peace" is equal to real peace, when its meaning is not "that nobody dies, or that they die less" but in fact means "keeping the power structure to not made angry powerful people".
Itachi did not want to avoid a war, he wanted to avoid a rebellion, but him chauvinism made him does not consider if that rebellion can be positive or if the rebels had a good reasons to being angry (an example: the North American war against the south ended with the abolition of slavery ... actually, with the thought of "it is better to maintain the social structure with the excuse that people would die in the war", the result would have been that slavery was not abolished, being worse in the long run).
With the Uchihas, I do not think I would have changed anything, but I do not think it would have worsened, the wars in the narutoverse are cyclical, deriving from the social structure of ... being mercenaries and hired assassins.
There is no real moral or practical reason to support the Konohan leaders against the Uchiha leaders before the masacre, but i can found a lot of reasons to support an oppressed clan against their opresors and finally, their murdererss.

2ch-ers' opinion (often humour), which I back, is that Itachi's sickness affected his Judgement. You don't take up the sword against your own people—your own parents—and say hey, these principles bind me to Kono-- No, just no, that shit was a tumor-guided decision. The part of his brain that makes judgement was compromised.

I dislike the character and know it was horrible writing involved in his story but damn even now he still gets hate. In a backwards kinda way Kishimoto did something good with writing Itachi creating such feelings of anger towards him people hate rant his ass many years later. You know that does take some talent.

I dislike the character and know it was horrible writing involved in his story but damn even now he still gets hate. In a backwards kinda way Kishimoto did something good with writing Itachi creating such feelings of anger towards him people hate rant his ass many years later. You know that does take some talent.

Click to expand...

Kishimoto did said he rather have people hate what character says rather than not remembering them at all.